In the Bible, Ethiopia is known as the land of Cush – an exotic and largely unknown territory. It was almost equally unfamiliar to Alfred Russell Wallace when he divided the world's animals into groups according to their geographic origins, but the country so fascinated him that he gave the name ‘Ethiopian Region’ to the whole of Africa. Later, Ethiopia escaped the extended periods of European colonization experienced by its neighbours, and the country remains in our minds one of the more exotic and mysterious areas of the world and a place of great zoological interest.